May 2012

Husbandrinka and I were looking at some old photos recently and reminiscing.

It’s funny how two people who share a life, and so much history can see such different things when looking at the same photo.

“Oh, honey, look at this one!” Husbandrinka tilted his screen towards me so that I could admire a photo taken some six years ago. “That’s when Jefferson Market was still open– see the bags?”

Of course I saw the bags. Jefferson Market was a Greenwich Village institution (and the bags were ever-present on Friends episodes) until the store closed a few years ago. We miss it. We miss it a lot.

But looking at the photograph, as much as I loved Jefferson Market, I couldn’t focus on the bags. They were insignificant to me.

What I saw was how red and shiny my red cart was. I’d been using that cart for over 20 years now, since before I was married, to haul laundry to the basement, groceries from the store, sometimes even blankets to the dry cleaners. That red cart is like a member of the family, but lately it hasn’t been as shiny. It’s still fine, no need to panic, but I can see that it won’t be with us forever.

I didn’t want to burden Husbandrinka with my worries about the red cart. Not while he was reminiscing about Jefferson Market.

That’s the great thing about photographs, I guess. Everyone notices something different.

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